Sensing Trouble?

There is still no opening date in sight for French chef Guy Martin’s hotly anticipated Sensing restaurant.

It’s been two years since the development team behind the $300 million Battery Wharf/Regent Hotel project announced that they had lured Martin to open his first American restaurant in their luxury digs.

In March, Martin did a quick PR tour through the city, promising a late spring launch. But in June, when we wrote about the project’s challenges in the face of the tanking real estate market, Sensing hadn’t yet opened.

Then, in mid-June, Regent Hotels & Resorts announced that they were pulling out of the nearly-completed project. So until a new hotel operator inks a deal, Sensing is stalled.

“The restaurant is still coming,” says Matt Watkins, vice president at Regan Communications, who reps the project. “They keep telling me fall of this year. And that’s what they feel is realistic.”

UPDATE 7/30:Francois Nivaud, a consultant on the Battery Wharf project, reports that key players on Sensing’s kitchen team have already arrived from France and are working on menus in anticipation of that aforementioned fall opening, regardless of whether or not a hotel deal has been signed.

UPDATE 7/31: Apparently that last statement (in itals) isn’t completely accurate. We’re now told that while Sensing can, in fact, launch even if the hotel has not yet opened, the project would need have a hotel operator in place. “[The developers] remain in discussions with high-end operators and fully expect to have an announcement in the near future,” says Watkins.